Health

This House of Commons Standing Committee on Health meeting studied the subject matter of clauses 400 to 456, division 25, of Bill C-15, the budget implementation act. The Minister of Health appeared for the first hour, followed by officials from the Department of Health, the Public Health Agency of Canada, and the Canadian Institutes for Health Research.

Minister Marjorie Michel testified that budget 2025 includes $5 billion in federal health infrastructure funding to help provinces build and renovate hospitals, emergency rooms, and medical schools, and that the government introduced a bill to create a more connected health care system by enabling secure sharing of personal health information. She stated that the Canadian Dental Care Plan has enrolled 5.8 million Canadians and that 2.8 million have received care, and she defended supervised consumption sites as life-saving tools while noting the federal government does not fund them directly.

Shalene Curtis-Micallef, Deputy Minister of Health, explained that the connected care bill is a framework that will allow development of regulations and consultations with provinces and territories, and that Health Canada considers multiple factors when approving exemption requests for supervised consumption sites.

Nancy Hamzawi, President of the Public Health Agency of Canada, stated that the agency anticipates responding to a long-standing access-to-information request on vaccine adverse reactions during the current calendar year, and that as of December 1, 2025, 3,557 claims had been received under the Vaccine Injury Support Program, with 2,061 pending review and $21.5 million paid to claimants.

Jocelyne Voisin, Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Health Policy Branch, testified that the connected care bill mandates adherence to interoperability standards and prevents data blocking, which will unlock health data for innovation and allow patients to access their own comprehensive records.

Kendal Weber, Assistant Deputy Minister, Controlled Substances and Cannabis Branch, stated that Health Canada does not set age limits or require identification at federally approved supervised consumption sites, and that the department provides transfer funding to community organizations for harm reduction supplies but does not directly purchase items such as crack pipes.

Natasha Crowcroft, Acting Chief Public Health Officer, was unable to respond to a question about Bill C-15's impact on incident reporting due to interpretation difficulties.

Paul Hébert, President of the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, said that the connected care bill will help move health data from hoarding to public good, enabling better clinical trials and AI-supported tools, and that budget 2024 and 2025 investments in infrastructure and talent will support secure science in Canada.

Kimby Barton, Director General, Centre for Biosecurity, testified that amendments to the Human Pathogens and Toxins Act were motivated by increased biomanufacturing activity and an evolving threat landscape, including espionage risks, and that a new publicly accessible registry will allow rapid updates to pathogen risk classifications.

Ryan Higgs, Acting Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Financial Officer, stated he did not have information on compliance costs for public institutions under the proposed amendments.

Pamela Aung-Thin, Assistant Deputy Minister, Health Products and Food Branch, noted that through project Orbis, Health Canada approved 16 oncology products in 2025 and 94 over the past six years.

The committee agreed to extend the deadline for submitting amendments to Bill C-15 to March 15, 2026, rather than the earlier date of March 3.